Door access control systems are designed to provide access to areas of a building for individuals who are authorized to access such areas and deny access to those areas of the building to individuals who are not authorized to access such areas. For example, certain individuals may be authorized to access a secure area of a building, whereas other individuals may not be allowed to access the secure area.
Previous approaches to door access control systems may utilize costly hardware devices located at perimeter(s) of secure areas to verify a user's identity. In some examples, personal identification number (PIN) pads, biometric sensors (e.g., fingerprint sensors and/or physical access cards (e.g., badges) may be used.
Carrying a physical access card may be cumbersome and in some systems, the card can continue to be misused (for example, by a thief who has stolen the card) until the incident is reported and the card is blocked. Another issue is that a user may be locked out of an area if the user forgets to carry the physical access card, and an unauthorized user may gain access to a secure area because the door access control system cannot verify the physical identity of the user carrying the physical access card.
In addition, such hardware devices may not only be expensive to install, operate, and/or maintain, but may soon become obsolete. This obsolescence can be caused by the system not being upgradeable (e.g., a card reader may not be upgradeable to a keypad or biometric reader).